Safe Mode
by Rokhal
Summary: Dean has a disturbing dream. Sam is in no condition to help. Coda for 6.22. Gore warning.
1. Safe Mode

Spoilers for Fight Club! Spoilers for Season 6! If they actually did this in Season 7, I'd stop watching!

Heavy gore. Gen, as long as you don't squint (omg please don't squint I beg you)

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><p>Bobby always kept useful things.<p>

In an empty corner of the basement was an adjusting table that tilted and rose, with adjusting arm and leg wings that swung and extended, and adjusting leather bands that clutched and released. It was an Earth model, purely mechanical, and Dean still thought it was too much, sometimes—but the workmanship was solid. Dean respected solid workmanship.

"I missed this," he confessed as he buckled Sam's arms to the wings, twisting his palms up to the proper angle before slipping his forearms between the bracers.

"I know," Sam replied, easing back against the stained wood. "It's okay."

"I'm good at it," Dean continued, buckling Sam's ankles to the lower wings. There were pads there, to protect the sharp bones from the wood. It really was a beautiful table, leaving as much of the task as possible in the hands of the operator. "Sometimes I just miss doing something I'm good at."

"I know," Sam said. "I remember."

Sam remembered. Sam knew. And now—what was the song? _Blue on black, match on a fire, cold on ice, it don't mean much._ Now _he_ was the one who would never understand. "Sammy," Dean whispered, a slender knife glowing unnoticed in his hand, "Thanks. Thank-you so much. I just—I needed this, thank-you so much."

Sam met his eyes, solemn and controlled, despite the terror behind his face. _Whisper on a scream...doesn't change a thing._ "It's okay, Dean. It's gonna be okay."

Dean stroked Sam's belly with the knife, never needing to look away from his eyes as the skin peeled aside, baring carmine muscle and gleaming silver sinew. He stroked again, guarding the organs from the knife-edge with two fingers just advanced of the gaping slit, as the muscle twitched and trembled at the invasion of air and steel.

Sam began to pant, and his organs swayed with each breath. There was pain, not a lot of pain, but plenty—but his eyes never left Dean's, he hadn't lost control. Sam was so strong.

Sam's intestines squirmed, warm and yielding, around his hand, as he parted them gently and reached in. There was a clump of nerves where the great coil of them met the spine, a critical, clumsy smear of them that demanded so much care to find and trigger. Dean hadn't liked to be meticulous. In his time, he'd been all frantic terror and rage, swift and precise, but finding no joy, no pleasure, in the process. He'd been a Jackson Pollock, not a Leonardo like his teacher, then, but that was before, that was years ago now, and Sam deserved so much better: the best he'd been taught, the best he could imagine. As his hand sunk between the intestines, their membranes closed around, hitching and squirming with the pulse of blood, hot wet heat and life. Smoothly, he reached his other hand between Sam's liver and the roof of his belly, and squeezed shut the root of his stomach. Gently, he touched the smear of nerves in its bundle of pulsing vessels and soft fat. Sam's stomach heaved against his hand, twice, three times, and his guts stilled for an instant before churning faster, chaotic now.

Sam blinked at him, swallowing against his nausea. Dean felt the swallows lap like waves against his restraining hand.

Reverently, he drew his probing fingers out of Sam's belly and retrieved the knife. He released Sam's stomach, still parting his liver from the floor of his chest, and watched him swallow again, waiting. "Breathe in," Dean murmured.

Sam breathed in, ribs rising and his chest floor tensing. Dean cut two small slits in the sheet of muscle and sinew, and listened, rapt, as air hissed in. Sam's throat clicked, and the breath slid out of his nose for the last time as his lungs slowly recoiled. His chest still heaved, but Sam had stopped panting. In Sam's eyes, he could see the air running out, panic building steadily in its place.

Dean reached up to cup Sam's jaw, his hand dripping with watery fluid that had begun to dry, gleaming, on the inside of his elbow, and Sam's mouth worked. _It's okay,_ he was saying. _Everything's gonna be okay._

And then Sam was hunched, standing over him, his boots inches from a sucking void in the earth, while Dean was broken and paralyzed on the grass, a scream of despair trapped in his throat as Sam leaned irretrievably backward—

Dean lurched upright, bedsprings shrieking. It was dark and cold. A draft fluttered through the half-open door of Bobby's guest bedroom. He still felt the itch of belly-fluid drying on his forearms. He imagined if he licked his fingers he'd find the faint egg-white savor of it. He dropped his head into his palms and dug his nails into his scalp. He needed whiskey. He needed to spend the rest of the night in a bewildered haze, clutching the toilet for balance as he upended his guts into it, and wake, amnesiac, with his head roaring in pain and vomit crusted on his cheek.

This was going to take a lot of whiskey.

He crept down to the kitchen and was surprised to find Sam, real non-amnesiac Sam who'd screamed for hours as soon as they were half-way safe and cried himself to sleep when they'd arrived, cringing at any light and cocooned in a heavy quilt, now upright and alert, studying news sites and eating scrambled eggs. Dean felt a sudden certainty that something was horribly wrong with this picture, and when Sam met his eyes, he knew why. He backed against the wall with a strangled gasp.

"It's okay, Dean," Sam's body said. It was empty of trust or love or even an actual desire to reassure him, and Dean hated it for making him miss the Sam in his dream. "Your Sam sent me out here."

"Sam sent you," Dean echoed. As though supported by strings, he pulled up a chair and sat across from the body. "What, there's...Jekyll and Hyde goin' on? What'd'ya mean he _sent _you? Where is he?"

The body gestured at the eggs, and spun Sam's IPad so Dean could read the headlines. "I'm taking care of him, and I'm keeping an eye on the outside world. I guess it is a Jekyll and Hyde thing, 'cause I'm made out of Sam, and there's no way you're gonna like me as much as him. But. I'm not what you think I am; he's not around anymore. Sam's got a little too much on his plate to eat and shit and read just now, but he remembers what it was like to be bullet-proof, so he made me up and sent me out." The body stabbed a lump of eggs and popped it in its mouth, as though for emphasis. "You need to buy frozen spinach," it remarked with its mouth full. "Canned goods are gettin' low, too. See if you can get Bobby to buy low sodium."

Dean clenched his fists and growled. "You're freakin' Tyler Durden?"

"No," the body snapped. Frustration—that was new. "Tyler Durden ran around behind the other guy's back. I report to Sam. I'm a subset of his personality. I don't have an independent consciousness, so you can stop thinking I'm suppressing him somehow."

"Prove it," Dean barked.

"You don't want to make Sam do that," not-Tyler replied. "He's busy. He's processing."

"He can take a few seconds off," Dean hissed.

The body raised an eyebrow. "So you're more worried about Sam's soul somehow slipping out and leaving you again than how to make this whole 'recovering from over a hundred years of abuse' experience easier on him."

Dean ground his teeth.

"Just think of me as Sam's selfish asshole side," the body quipped, turning its attention back to Sam's IPad. "Oh, and while you're worried about Sam, you might want to watch the drinking. Wouldn't want to miss his daily fifteen minutes of consciousness."

"Fifteen minutes?"

"Every day." The body smirked, like a salesman listing shiny new features on some unfathomable gadget, secure in the knowledge that Dean would never be able to weigh the pros and cons before it was time to pay or leave the store. "Oh," it continued. "He resolved to surface every twenty-four hours, but he had no idea when he'll feel ready. Better stay sharp so you can make those fifteen minutes an uplifting and life-affirming experience, okay, Dean?"

Dean slumped onto the table, burying his face between his forearms. He was in charge of giving Sam life affirming experiences, and he had dreams of reconnecting with his brother through eviscerative torture. "The other guy poured shots for me," he muttered.

"The other guy didn't see much long-term value in you," the body replied. "He figured your knees would give out before your liver. Speaking of, I ordered a flat of glucosamine you're gonna take."

Dean groaned. "So now I'm _old_ and it's my fault."

The body ignored him.

Dean missed Sam already: screaming and sobbing Sam, angry Sam, even door-slamming self-righteous teenage douchebag Sam. But Sam was hiding, like a sick dog burrowed away under the porch, and Dean was helpless. "So Sam's pinned his Hell-recovery plan on me turning into Barney the Dinosaur on command," he grumbled. "Great."

The body was silent for a while, except for chewing and the clink of the fork. "Not Hell," it said at last. "Hell and the Cage don't connect; that's why Azazel had to perform a ritual on Earth to contact Lucifer. The Cage is uncomfortable because it's designed to keep Lucifer powerless and isolated, but it's not deliberately cruel."

"But it's enough to make Sam stop poking at the Wall after one seizure," Dean said, looking up.

"Lucifer runs cold, like a supercomputer," the body explained. "The Cage is hot. Like a supernova. But the real damage is from being exposed to the archangels. They're pure. They're too pure. Lucifer and Michael are also assloads crazier than you and Sam could hope to be, and they kept projecting their issues onto him, trying to make him understand what a worthless termite he was for screwing with their plans, and how their brother was wrong and they were right. They didn't think they were torturing him; they thought they were lecturing him."

Dean studied the body, processing this. Hell was built on tradition, and on sympathy. Nothing was done before the rack that was not intimately understood from upon the rack. Souls and demons were carved from the same material, and would all, inevitably, become the same again. There was history there. There was a system, an artistry, an intelligence.

In a particularly cruel prank by the universe, Sam's mind had been flayed by accident.

"Half of Lucifer's issues were 'cause he felt rejected by his big brother," the body continued. "So, you know, don't do that, and you'll go a long way toward canceling out the shit Lucifer put in his head."

Dean sighed. "That simple, huh?"

The body's mouth twitched. "Yeah, that's been tough with you two, hasn't it?"

Dean covered his face again.

"You know, he always secretly wished you'd go to Stanford with him, even though he knew it was a dumb idea," the body informed him. "He was pretty dumb all around back then, though. He was pissed at you for dying—I mean, not just the Deal, the rawhead job when you fried your heart, too. Way he saw it, if you really loved him, you'd want to hold on to life a bit harder."

Dean felt heavy enough to sink through the oak floorboards.

"I'm just callin' it like he saw it at the time, man," the body said. "When you got back, he was pissed that you trusted the angels over him. When you tricked him into the panic room, he was pretty upset about that, too, but he thinks he's over it. Then you called him a monster after you tracked him down again—and Michael and Lucifer just _loved_ that conversation. I think I could draw it frame-by-frame in HD, if Sam could draw, anyway."

"I'm _sorry_ about that," Dean choked. If only there'd been a mistake, something he could rub out with a word or two and it'd all go away—but it hadn't been. Dean had picked his words like knives and said them. "I shouldna said that, that's worse 'n what happened with him and Dad—" If only he hadn't meant it. If only it had been a mistake.

The body pushed the laptop aside and rested its chin on its fists, studying the ceiling. "And then there's the voicemail before he started the Apocalypse where you called him a vampire and threatened to kill him—"

Dean felt his body flood with rage and his face turn purple. "_WHAT?_"

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><p>Lyrics from Kenny Wayne Shepherd's "Blue on Black".<p>

I think of SPN Hell as the cycle of abuse writ large, with each victim coming to power by identifying with their abuser, but all originating, in the beginning, with a never-ending party that got a tiny bit out of hand. My theory is that all Lucifer did was create an eternal playground for Lilith, and that she and the other demons became what we see today all on their own.


	2. Unsafe Mode

A new chapter came to me. Why? Why now when I'm already busy answering my own prompts from a fic meme that died over a year ago? Such are the ways of art.

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><p>Sam resurfaced with no warning.<p>

One minute, his body was doing lunges in the relative cool of the living room, while its completely unappetizing yet nutritionally balanced perversion of Hamburger Helper simmered on the stove. The next, Sam was gasping like a drowning man, falling on his ass, and scuttling backwards under the nearest desk. When Dean lunged after him, Sam, in a move he really should have anticipated, grabbed his arm, judo-rolled him to the floor, and dashed to the kitchen. By the time Dean confirmed that his shoulder was still in its socket and staggered to his feet, Sam was wedged between the fridge and the side door, clutching an eight-inch chef's knife. Dean froze.

Bobby's boots sounded on the basement stairs, directly opposite Sam's defensive position. Dean yelled an alarm. "Bobby, watch it, he's got a knife!"

The footsteps retreated. Sam cocked his head, hair swinging haphazardly over his eyes. "What's the date?" he hissed.

Dean advanced cautiously, hands at his sides. "What's that, Sammy?"

The knife shook in Sam's whitened fist. "If Bobby's walkin', _what's the mother-grabbin' date?_" he snarled, teeth flashing.

Bobby's boots pounded back up the stairs, and as the door cracked open, the hot white glare of a halogen work lamp burst out, right in Sam's face. Sam screamed and dropped the knife, cringing against the fridge like Gollum. Dean tackled him and kicked the knife away. Bobby thankfully turned the light off before Dean had to strangle him with the extension cord for abusing Sam's new phobia.

The Cage hadn't hurt Sam's sparring any. After a few seconds of grappling, Dean was on his back, seeing stars after a knee to the nuts, and desperately trying to pry Sam's hands off his throat. Bobby jumped in and wrapped his coat around Sam's head, blind-folding him like a wild animal, and Dean slipped away and pinned Sam in an armlock when Sam froze in shock.

Sam wheezed and sobbed behind the coat, face to the floor.

"It's twenty-twelve," Dean rasped. "Swear to god. Bobby came back to life, remember? It's June. Twenty-twelve."

Sam collapsed, breath leaving him in a low whine. Dean slowly eased his hold. As soon as Sam had his arm back, he pawed around in the air until he hit Dean's sleeve, then wrapped his hand around Dean's forearm with bruising force. Dean would think Sam was actually grinding his bones together if he didn't know what that felt like. "Dean?" Sam moaned.

"Yeah, it's me," Dean replied, sagging as the adrenaline faded. He climbed off of Sam and settled down beside him, nodding at Bobby, who backed away. Sam's grip tightened, if that was possible. "Think you could ease up on my arm there, kiddo?"

Sam didn't respond.

"It's kinda hurting a little," Dean admitted.

Sam twitched, and yanked his hand from Dean's arm as though burned, flinging himself backward to rattle against the door. Dean's gut dropped. "Hey, hey," he soothed, his voice breaking. "It's okay, you can hold my hand if you want. Here." Moving slowly, though Sam couldn't see a thing with Bobby's dusty coat wrapped around his face, he slipped his hand between Sam's fingers. Sam pulled away, then closed his hand carefully around Dean's, like he was caging a butterfly.

Dean sighed. "You ready to get that blindfold off?"

Sam shook his head, the jacket flopping.

"Whatever you need, Sammy."

Dean sat against the side door shoulder-to-shoulder with Sam, as Sam's shaking fingers tickled the hairs on the back of his hand. Bobby took a seat at the kitchen table and watched, eyes shiny, while Dean hummed snatches of songs, wishing as he did that 80's hair metal hadn't had such an obsession with death and angels.

Dean wondered how far they'd gotten on Sam's daily fifteen minutes. "I got to talking with your imaginary friend last night," Dean murmured, watching the coat. "You remember him?"

Sam nodded, otherwise sitting absolutely still, so still that Dean was still to avoid jostling their hands.

"You remember what we talked about?"

Sam paused, then rolled his head in an ambiguous motion. "Not right now," he rasped, sounding choked with tears.

"He mentioned some things that might be bothering you," Dean told him. "God knows I've done some shitty stuff to you, Sammy, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But he mentioned this voicemail..."

Sam shivered.

"Yeah, something about calling you a vampire and saying I was through with your ass?" Dean swallowed, as though the words were bile in his mouth, and took a deep breath to keep the anger out of his voice. "That wasn't me."

Sam's hand tightened just an instant around Dean's, and when next he spoke, it was in a low broken growl. "I will call down every angel from Heaven and burn them all."

Dean winced, and Bobby's eyes narrowed warily. "Let's put that on the old to-do list, huh, Sammy? At least 'till you're done with the blindfold."

Sam slumped sideways onto Dean's shoulder. "Write it in Sharpie," he croaked.

"You got it."

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><p>Homicidal knife-wielding broken Sam is my favorite flavor of broken Sam. I would say that Sam has made great strides to overcome the learned helplessness he doubtless developed in the Cage, and can be excused a tiny overreaction.<p>

Go, Sammy! Burn them all!


End file.
